Maple Danishhttp://mapledanish.com
A Canadian Nut in the Land of EclairsThu, 22 Nov 2018 23:06:38 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.1Climate Nudges, Level 2: Communityhttp://mapledanish.com/climate-nudges-level-2-community/
http://mapledanish.com/climate-nudges-level-2-community/#respondThu, 22 Nov 2018 23:06:38 +0000http://mapledanish.com/?p=1148After checking in with myself on the five best ways to reduce my personal carbon footprint, I figured the next step was to reach out into the community — maybe to spread the word, or maybe to see what other people were thinking or doing to help stoke the green, clean, renewable engine. Either way,…

]]>After checking in with myself on the five best ways to reduce my personal carbon footprint, I figured the next step was to reach out into the community — maybe to spread the word, or maybe to see what other people were thinking or doing to help stoke the green, clean, renewable engine. Either way, I needed to reassure myself that I wasn’t alone.

This is, I think, a common problem. We all have a stake in the game, but a lot of the time it feels as if we are all playing solitaire. I blame the media, which is to say, I blame the parent corporations who control both fossil fuel interests and the media. They don’t benefit from putting climate reform on the front page; even when it’s obvious to everyone but Trump that global warming is contributing to wildfires, extreme weather, and other lethal events, the media tends to “silo” climate change, tucking it away as a niche-interest story instead of stitching it into their main coverage.

As a result, both the problem and the many grassroots solutions get eclipsed, and we’re left shouting into a void. After spending the better part of 2018 researching global warming, I needed to share some of my observations. I was especially interested in testing some hypotheses about how we tend to talk about climate change — or, more often, how (and why) we don’t talk about it.

I started small, by visiting other people’s events. Last month, the Antigonish Community Energy Co-op held a seminar at the Sydney public library about solar panels. It was not only tremendously informative, but it also let me observe climate-conscious locals in their natural habitat. A couple of weeks later, the library held another eco-centric event: a screening of the short documentary Climate Change and the Human Prospect, which reported on a 2017 “thinkers’ summit” in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. Again, the most interesting part was the discussion afterwards.

When community members talk about climate change with like-minded activists, the tone is often frustrated and desperate — we know what’s going on, and what needs to be done, so why isn’t everybody else on board? — but there is also an element of catharsis. It’s a tough subject, both logistically and emotionally, and it’s clearly a relief when citizens can articulate what’s been weighing upon them, without fear of dismissal or reprisal. In this way, we can have conversations whose content is mostly depressing, but walk away feeling relieved, or even uplifted.

It’s not enough, though. Each of those events had about a dozen people in attendance, and I’m pretty sure that everyone present already knew the score. We need to boost the signal, so that the majority of community members — people for whom climate change is a distant, abstract problem; people who rarely talk or even think about it, much less act upon it — start to feel the same catharsis. If activists can reach non-activists, and especially if we can give them the same mini-boosts of optimism that we periodically exchange amongst ourselves, then the momentum might ultimately reach governments.

So, I ran my own event, and I tried to make it feel accessible to laypeople. I held my Climate Café on a Saturday night in my favourite downtown coffee shop (the library would have been cheaper, but I wanted to start in a venue where I’d feel more confident. Plus the coffee is better). In promoting the event, I tried to stress that anyone could come, even if they didn’t know the first thing about global warming… but I also invited a couple of local activists to seed the conversation. Finally, I invited a city councilor, in the hopes that whatever we discussed that night did not go unnoticed by policymakers.

I didn’t really know how it would go. I wanted the event to feel like a conversation, not a lecture, but I knew there needed to be some structure. Fortunately, event planning is one of my fortés. I wrote up a list of questions: “How often do you think about climate change? What does it make you feel?” “With whom do you talk about climate change?” etc.. I prepared a sheet of links and resources. I even had a door prize. And I put my personal objective front-and-centre: let’s figure out how to make this topic less political, less fraught, and more accessible.

The turnout was small, but in some ways encouraging. Of the nine people (not including me), three were middle aged, two were retirees, and three were university students — a great demographic spread. Nearly everyone was already “woke” as the millennials would say, although I think of the three university students, only one was a serious activist (she dragged the other two along for support). And I was right, having the city councilor present helped add both an official air and also a sense of potential to the evening.

We met for two hours. The first was spent in groups of 3 or 4, answering the questions I’d prepared. Then I introduced the group to the findings of Per E. Stoknes, a Norwegian economist and psychologist. In his book What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming (and in his TED Talk), Stoknes lists 5 psychological obstacles to having open and productive discussions about climate change:

Distance

Doom

Dissonance

Denial

Identity

…as well as 5 techniques for overcoming those barriers:

Social

Supportive

Simple

Signal

Stories

The attendees liked these lists a lot, as it led to some more concrete ideas about how to change the way we talk.

Many participants agreed that compartmentalizing the problem, and especially celebrating small steps towards reducing carbon emissions, made for more productive conversations. Participants also agreed that regional pride could be a motivator towards meaningful action. I pointed out that social conformity could be harnessed for positive change, as when residents in a neighbourhood invest in solar panel after/because another resident has done so.

Some participants celebrated the optimisim of children and the idea of involving kids in climate reform actions. However, it was also pointed out that parents—who in some respects have the greatest stake in reversing climate change—are among the busiest citizens, and may therefore need help or advocacy.

Among the most frequently mentioned obstacles to productive discussion were: feelings of despair (“why bother”), complaints about cost, passing the buck (“they’re gonna fix the problem eventually”), and the effects of regionalism (especially as conservatives pit region against region).

My personal takeaway: the participants want to engage others, in order to feel solidarity and a sense of community instead of solitary hopelessness. They need positive, specific, and ideally local stories to introduce into conversations, reflecting Stoknes’s recommended solutions (social, supportive, and simple).

So even though the turnout was a bit disappointing, I think I got what I wanted: a direction and focus for my own community climate work. I’ll keep going to other people’s events, of course, and I may volunteer for the local environmental organization (once they get settled in their new location, and choose a new executive director). But for now, I think I’ll focus my research on finding feel-good climate facts and stories, and broadcasting them through whatever media I can get my hands on.

]]>http://mapledanish.com/climate-nudges-level-2-community/feed/0Climate Nudges, Level 1: Personalhttp://mapledanish.com/climate-nudges-level-1-personal/
http://mapledanish.com/climate-nudges-level-1-personal/#respondSat, 03 Nov 2018 19:32:07 +0000http://mapledanish.com/?p=1145Today I want to write about some of the choices we as individuals can make that can significantly impact global warming. It’s a thorny subject, and I want to preface my thoughts by emphasizing two things: first, that personal/domestic changes are only one level of action—there are also choices we can make with respect to…

]]>Today I want to write about some of the choices we as individuals can make that can significantly impact global warming. It’s a thorny subject, and I want to preface my thoughts by emphasizing two things: first, that personal/domestic changes are only one level of action—there are also choices we can make with respect to our local communities, as well as advocacy that can potentially trickle up to affect national or even global trends. So if the following list of lifestyle changes only serves to paralyze you (with guilt, exhaustion, depression, take your pick), don’t give up, just shift your focus.

Second, based on current reports about the accelerating pace of climate disruption, it’s clear that national/global reform is necessary. We can’t fix the planet as individuals; we need government action. But that doesn’t let us off the hook at home; in fact, it’s most likely that government reforms (a carbon tax, for instance) will be tailored to essentially force our hands. So, the choice is probably between taking some of these steps now, when we feel ownership over our actions, or taking them in 5, 10, or 20 years when the alernatives have become untenable. Personally, I like the little dose of dopamine that comes from taking independent action to save the planet.

But there are actions, and then there are actions. Most of Canadians recycle, and many have taken advantage of energy rebates to replace our light bulbs, or even a couple of appliances, with more energy-efficient models. Maybe you’re considering making your next car a hybrid? These are all low- to moderate-impact actions—that is, they reduce your carbon footprint by less than 0.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide (or equivalent) emissions (tCO2e) per year. That’s good for dopamine, but it’s not enough to make a significant impact.

These estimates come from from a 2017 study, co-authored by climate scientists in Sweden’s Lund University and the University of British Columbia, called “The Climate Mitigation Gap.” The “tl;dr” version of the article is here, in the form of an infographic. I’ll talk through five of the high-impact actions, going from least to greatest:

5. Eat a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e)

Factory farms produce methane, the second-worst greenhouse pollutant after CO2. Humans need to eat, of course, and our psychological and cultural attachment to meat is even stronger than our economic dependency. But switching to a plant-based diet remains one of the simplest actions, as well as the most popular—estimates suggest 375 million people on Earth are vegetarian.

You’ve got options, too. Instead of going full vegan (ie. giving up meat, fish, and dairy products), you can ease in with a reducetarian diet. That’s what I did, starting in June of this year. I still eat dairy, but I’ve reduced my meat consumption to once a week or so. No regrets; I feel healthy and my grocery bills have dropped sharply.

Even if you’re not ready to quit being a carnivore just yet, there are ways to reduce your food footprint. Buy local to reduce transport emissions. Favour products with minimal packaging (bulk is best). And try not to waste food—that’s just adding insult to injury, especially with imported food.

4. Buy green energy (1.5 tCO2e)

Depending on where you live, your home’s heat and electricity probably come from a combination of oil (dirty), natural gas (dirty), hydroelectric (cleanish), and—especially in the Maritimes—coal (way dirty). Until the federal and provincial governments really step up their games and roll out large-scale renewable energy solutions, it remains our responsibilty as homeowners to explore carbon-light options: wind, geothermal, and solar.

For years, I held off on pursuing these options for the dumbest of reasons: I didn’t really understand them. But I recently went to a public forum on solar installation, and I learned one crucial fact: I don’t need to understand them. Solar companies will do all the heavy lifting, figuratively and literally, to determine how best to convert your house. Once you’ve got panels, your house will generate its own energy, using your city’s grid as a battery to store up unused juice for when you need it.

The conversion process isn’t cheap, but my province at least is offering major rebates. Think of it like buying energy in bulk; plus, once you’ve paid off the installation cost, your bills will drop to nearly zero. I’m currently waiting on my home assessment, and hope to get the installation done in springtime.

3. Avoid one roundtrip transatlantic flight (1.6 tCO2e)

I spent 2016 and 2017 jetting across the planet without realizing how hard I was being on it. Estimates vary, but most sources I read suggest that one round-trip flight from Eastern Canada to Europe unleashes 2-3 tonnes of CO2per passenger. Considering the average Canadian’s carbon footprint is 18.8 tCO2e per year, one flight represents about 13% of your annual contribution to global warming. That’s a massive impact for one decision.

But, just as many of us have made meat a central part of our identities, travel can be an intensely personal thing to give up. Some of us are expected to fly for work; others are fleeing the cold Canadian winters, even if only for a brief tropical vacation. Whereas air travel was inconceivable a few generations ago, it can now seem like our birthright, or at least like the reward for all our hard work.

Since my carbon-costly sabbatical year, I’ve only flown once. My family and I are planning vacations closer to home, and we’re looking into more carbon-efficient means of travel, like rail. And while it pains me to think that I might never make it back to Paris, I can acknowledge that my intercontinental adventures have been the result of historical luck—being born in the right country at the right time—not entitlement. We’ve had an amazing run with air travel, but the Earth has spoken: it is time to wind down.

2. Live car-free (2.4 tCO2e)

You knew it would be on the list. We’ve all known forever: car culture is killing the planet. And much as we’d love to convince ourselves that those upgraded appliances will off-set our exhaust costs, the Swedish study makes it plain: surrendering the wheel is one of the single most effective actions any individual can take to help reverse global warming.

Canada is not designed with its car-less citizens in mind. Some cities are better than others, but most of our urban planning was done under the blithe assumption that everyone drives. And while European and Asian cities are actively working towards car-free status, there’s very little momentum in North America for alternative transportation systems. All of which is to say: going car-free in 2018 is a brave but thankless choice.

My family isn’t there yet. But I carpooled to work all summer, and I’ve stopped allowing myself short-distance drives in the city. My wife bikes to work when it’s warm enough. Like most Canadians, we aren’t yet at a point where we can toss the keys in the trash, but we are starting to conceive of what changes need to happen before we take that inevitable step. More than any other item on the list, this can afford to be a community effort before it becomes a personal choice. Write your city council to ask what transportation reforms are currently in the works.

1. Have one fewer child (58.6 tCO2e)

What a devastating thing to ask of any family! I’m all done having children (and even the one kid took a lot of cajoling before I agreed), yet I can still empathize with those who sincerely want to make a difference on the Earth—not just for themselves, but for their children. And now I’m telling you the best solution (by far—look at that carbon reduction!) is to not have children?!

It makes perfect logical sense: humans themselves are the problem, carbon-emitting in almost everything we do. As the population grows, resources become scarcer. Global warming compounds that exponentially, through droughts, floods, and weather events that strip us of our resources. Fewer humans means smaller communities, which means less pressure on the planet. It makes sense.

But logic and parenthood have never been partners. Our urge to reproduce is stronger than a love for travel or a lust for meat; in the long run, it may be stronger than our instincts for survival. No legislation, nor any emotional appeals will ever convince the planet to stop having kids. But fewer kids? One fewer kid than you predicted in your high school yearbook? Maybe.

I think this is a sobering and suitable place to end the list, because it illustrates the stark choices we have ahead of us. If your response to “Have one fewer child” is entrenched resistance—or if, like me, you’ve already hit your planned maximum—then, well, earn your right to a legacy by reviewing the other five items on the list, and resolving to put one or more of them into practice. Make them your New Year’s resolutions, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Whatever you do, do something. Personal, local, municipal, provincial, federal, global—choose the scale of your map, and strike out on a journey. We are nothing if not adaptable creatures, but sometimes we need a nudge out of the nest. For Canadians at least, the twentieth century has been an extraordinarily comfy nest, but the clock is ticking. Choose a direction, and get nudging.

]]>http://mapledanish.com/climate-nudges-level-1-personal/feed/0Two Weeks of Greenhttp://mapledanish.com/two-weeks-of-green/
http://mapledanish.com/two-weeks-of-green/#respondFri, 26 Oct 2018 18:34:15 +0000http://mapledanish.com/?p=1142A couple of weeks ago, I posted a climate credo. Since then, the environment has been in the news cycle more often than usual: there was an emergency debate on global warming in the House of Commons, and just this week, the Prime Minister announced he was moving ahead with a nationwide (sort of) carbon…

]]>A couple of weeks ago, I posted a climate credo. Since then, the environment has been in the news cycle more often than usual: there was an emergency debate on global warming in the House of Commons, and just this week, the Prime Minister announced he was moving ahead with a nationwide (sort of) carbon tax. I guess it’s a good time to be a born-again climate advocate?

I’m mostly joking, of course — it would be infinitely better if the world didn’t need climate advocates — but I do find some optimism in the fact that people are talking about the environment more, even if the tone of those conversations isn’t always productive. It helps to bring my mission into focus; I may not always know exactly what to say, but I am pretty good at helping others to figure out how to have uncomfortable conversations.

Meanwhile, here are some of the things I’ve done to promote climate change in the past two weeks. This list is 100% NOT intended to make anyone else feel guilty about not doing enough. Think of it more like a brainstorming list. Maybe one thing on the list will plant a seed in you, giving you a clearer sense of how you, too, can help. One thing at a time is enough.

When selling Girl Guide cookies with my daughter, I brought along a petition for people to sign, calling upon the Guides to change the recipe of their cookies to exclude palm oil.

I wrote a couple of articles, sending one to the Halifax Chronicle-Herald and the other to The Cape Breton Post. A lot of this sort of writing is toss-into-the-wind stuff, but eventually one thing will get picked up and published, hopefully leading to a broader audience.

At the request of 350.org, I printed out the UN’s IPCC report on the projected effects of a 1.5 degree C increase in global temperature, and dropped it off at the office of my MP, Mark Eyking. (I read it myself too.)

I met with a board member of ACAP, the local environmentalist non-profit, to discuss ways in which I could be of use to them.

With my seven-year-old (and my infinitely patient wife), I explored different household configurations that could help us to conserve water, or re-use grey water.

On my birthday, I went to a presentation on solar panel installation and rebate opportunities. If you’re in Nova Scotia, I recommend you get in touch with Appleseed Energy, to find out if you can take advantage of their group order discounts. (Or message me with questions — I now know a lot about solar panels!)

I booked my favourite local coffee shop for a couple of hours next month to run a “climate café” which is something I just made up, I guess? Basically it’ll be a public discussion about climate change, a chance for people to ask questions or explain how they feel… hopefully without slipping into partisan debate.

I’ve also read a LOT of articles and a bit from a couple of books. And I’ve talked to a lot of people. It gets easier. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable or weird — the server at the restaurant is a captive audience, and probably doesn’t need to hear about the ways reducetarianism has affected my digestive system — but mostly it feels natural to acknowledge that this (climate change) is a big deal, and it’s on our minds.

It feels… well, again, not “good” exactly. But it feels “right.” If nothing else, keeping active staves off the howling existential terror. And that’s never a bad thing!

]]>http://mapledanish.com/two-weeks-of-green/feed/0Imagining a Better Nowhttp://mapledanish.com/imagining-a-better-now/
http://mapledanish.com/imagining-a-better-now/#respondSat, 20 Oct 2018 16:48:45 +0000http://mapledanish.com/?p=1139Take a moment to imagine that you are living in the time of your great-grandparents. Imagine yourself surrounded by horse-drawn carriages, oil lamps, and steam engines. You know that exciting changes are on the horizon—maybe you’ve already glimpsed a few, like the electric light bulb or the automobile—but it’s impossible to guess how the next…

]]>Take a moment to imagine that you are living in the time of your great-grandparents. Imagine yourself surrounded by horse-drawn carriages, oil lamps, and steam engines. You know that exciting changes are on the horizon—maybe you’ve already glimpsed a few, like the electric light bulb or the automobile—but it’s impossible to guess how the next scientific discovery will change your life.

Now imagine that a visitor from the future arrives and tells you four things that may come to pass within the next four generations. Here are the time traveler’s predictions:

First, metal aircraft will crisscross the sky daily, carrying thousands of passengers across oceans and continents.

Second, a worldwide network of electrical cables and storage devices will allow for the instantaneous exchange of information.

Third, most people will carry around tiny screens that can perform translations, calculations, and dozens of other functions, by communicating with objects in outer space.

Fourth, humans will disrupt the planet’s atmosphere with pollution, creating floods, droughts, and storms around the world.

Can you imagine? Some visionaries could. Jules Verne, a science-fiction pioneer who had a knack for getting the future right by accident, described a man-made scheme that nearly caused the world to flood in his 1889 novel The Purchase of the North Pole. In his version, an American gun club tries to build a cannon so huge that its shot will knock the Earth of its axis. Tellingly, the trigger-happy Americans are trying to clear the North Pole of ice because they think there might be coal deposits underneath. “We are so much in need of it,” Verne writes, “that the world may be called ‘an animal of coal.’”

But Verne was the exception, not the rule. Most people in 1889 had no clear idea of what the future would look like. If a time traveler gave them the four predictions I mentioned above, they wouldn’t have a clue if any of them were plausible. Most likely, they’d dismiss them all as sheer fantasy. Satellites and cell phones would go into the same category as huge, planet-shifting cannons: science-fiction, with the emphasis on fiction.

Yet here we are. Amazing! In less than 130 years, we’ve gone from steam trains to supersonic jets, from telegraphs to texts, and more! Through human ingenuity, we’ve created vaccines that have nearly eradicated dozens of deadly diseases. We’ve learned how to replace lungs, hips, and hearts. We’ve doubled our average lifespans. When we’re motivated, it seems as if humans can do anything.

As we get better at medicine, engineering, and technology, we also get better at predicting the future. Your great-grandparents may not have known what lay ahead for themselves or their species, but our scientists are obsessively poring over the tidal waves of data that have started surging in, ever since we put satellites in orbit to observe the world. Just like the algorithm on your phone can make educated guesses about where you are, or what you’re likely to type next, scientists use algorithms to anticipate the planet’s trends.

This month, the world’s leading experts on environmental science got together to publish a report about the future. Hundreds of scientists contributed what they’ve observed over 50 years or more. The report came to the public through the United Nations’s International Panel on Climate Change. It’s pretty bad news—the sort of future vision that would make Jules Verne give up science-fiction and take up gardening.

Before we get to the bad news—and to what we might be able to do about it—take another step back to 1889. Remember those four predictions? Back then, it would have seemed like lunacy to behave as if any of those things were really going to happen. If your great-grandparents had somehow been able to purchase stock in Apple Computers—well, you’d be a billionaire today, of course, but back then, they would have been laughed out of town. Yet here we are.

In 2018, you’d be a laughing-stock if you didn’t believe in jet planes, satellites, and the internet. However, there are still a lot of people who think the fourth prediction—man-made climate change—isn’t happening. And sure, it’s much easier to believe in, say, a cell phone, because it’s something you can see and touch and use. Even compared to something huge like the internet, global warming is big (it’s right there in the name) and hard to pin down.

But it’s one of the ways we’ve managed to come so far in such a short time: we don’t all have to know everything, we just need to trust the people who know the right things. I don’t ask an airline pilot to fix my laptop, and I certainly wouldn’t ask my internet technician to fly a plane. But I have to trust them both to do what they’re trained to do, or else nothing gets done.

It’s silly to trust one scientist, or even ten. But when hundreds agree, it makes sense to at least consider moving their prediction out of science-fiction and into science-facts. When 97 percent of publishing climate scientists around the world say global warming is happening, it makes sense to listen. After all, how much more ridiculous is it, really, than space shuttles or heart transplants?

Now, back to the bad news. The UN’s report states that unless coordinated action is taken within 12 years, the Earth’s average temperature will rise beyond any on record. Heat kills crops and livestock, but it also melts ice, making oceans rise. Unless we take action on a large scale, coastal cities (where 80 percent of humans live) will be flooded. Heat also makes hurricanes form. We’ve already seen and felt heatwaves, floods, and hurricanes increasing in the past few years. If we do nothing, they will all get worse and worse. That’s the bad news.

But there’s good news too. Humans are amazing! Jules Verne may have warned us about climate change, but most of his books were about humanity working together to achieve unforeseen success. It’s what we, as a species, do: we see a challenge and then set our amazing brains to overcoming it. We’ve done it before, avoiding nuclear annihilation with diplomacy, or fixing acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer with science, awareness, and environmental sanctions.

If enough people move past the “doubting” phase, then humanity can reverse global warming before it becomes a real killer. But 12 years is not a long time; it’s not even a generation. We need to get out of our “great-grandparent” mentality, and on board with what’s happening today. Invest in the future to make a better now.

]]>http://mapledanish.com/imagining-a-better-now/feed/0Climate Credohttp://mapledanish.com/climate-credo/
http://mapledanish.com/climate-credo/#respondTue, 16 Oct 2018 13:52:06 +0000http://mapledanish.com/?p=1136I have a short list of values, and every few years I write them out and re-evaluate them. For as long as I can remember, “the environment” has been on my list, but it has never risen to the top. I don’t think I’m alone in this. A few years ago, I participated in a…

]]>I have a short list of values, and every few years I write them out and re-evaluate them. For as long as I can remember, “the environment” has been on my list, but it has never risen to the top.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. A few years ago, I participated in a town hall-style community discussion about “what Cape Bretoners love most” about their home, and “where they think their home needs work” or attention. A majority chose the island’s natural beauty as one of the top “things to love” (and with good reason; as I write this, it’s the heart of autumn, and the trees are magnificent). But very few chose “environmental stewardship” as something in need of attention.

We love the Earth, and we want it to remain beautiful and healthy, especially as it provides what we need to live: oxygen, clean water, temperate weather. But most of us don’t feel personally responsible for its upkeep, beyond a few habitual steps like recycling. I think we mostly assume that we’re all in the same boat, but somebody else is steering, and they know which course to chart for a safe future.

I don’t feel that way any more. It changed for me in January, when I did some research about climate change for a play, and I discovered a lot of alarming facts that weren’t making it into the public conversations. I spent most of the time since then reeling—not in denial, exactly, but sort of stunned and uncertain what to say or do.

Last week, the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change released a report which not only confirmed my initial research, but also brought the urgent, terrifying facts into the public eye. We’ve got about 12 years to reverse course—to change our economy, our lifestyles, and our consumption levels so they do not all revolve around fossil fuels—before the Earth’s average temperatures rise catastrophically.

That’s as hard for me to write as it is for you to read, but it’s the truth. It’s science; it’s our future. Instead of bombarding you with images of what that catastrophe might look like—you can trust me when I say it’s very, very bad, or you can Google “long term effects of global warming” and see for yourself—I’d rather focus on what there might still be left for us to do about it.

I’m not a climate scientist or an activist. I don’t have leverage with politicians or oil executives. All I’ve got is a 10-month head-start on processing the bad news. It’s allowed me to move through the initial stages of denial, anger, and despair, and to achieve something vaguely resembling resolve.

I’m resolving to believe that humans are capable of fixing the mess we’ve made. It’s partly based on an admittedly selective review of the human track record: if we can turn our backs on dehumanizing and exploitative practices like slavery and totalitarianism; if we can pull ourselves back from the brink of nuclear annihilation; if we can seal a hole in the ozone layer, then we can work together to put the brakes on fossil fuel extraction and other carbon-heavy industries.

But mostly, my resolve is a leap of faith. I have always believed that humans are 99% animals and 1% divine—that we have the spark of something which transcends our base instincts for self-preservation, something capable of acting for the greater good.

Between January and now, I thought I’d lost that faith, and I was convinced that we are just animals, and die out the same way as most species: blindly fighting or blindly fleeing. But we are not just animals, and we are far from blind. In fact, what gives me the most optimism is that in 2018, we know more about ourselves and our planet than we ever thought possible. 100 years ago, we couldn’t possibly have reversed global warming. Now, at least, we know how.

I’m choosing to believe that humans are magic, but the challenge ahead of us can’t be solved with a mere “abracadabra.” It’s going to involve reinventing who we are, most especially those of us who live in developed nations. It requires thinking and acting both locally and globally, sometimes at the same time. It involves learning new skills, some of which will push us outside our comfort zones.

And it will absolutely, 100%, involve giving things up. That’s hard to face up to, because we trick ourselves into believing that everything we have—our phones, our cars, what’s on our plates, next year’s vacation—it’s all stuff that we’ve earned, and it’s ours by right, and it would be unfair to lose any of it. It’s hard to overcome the strength of our attachments. Sometimes it seems literally impossible.

But if you think of climate change as the cancer, and of that process of transformation as the chemo, it can happen. If we make it through, we’re going to be changed by the experience; but we’re going to be alive, and stronger in many ways for the ordeal. If we reject the treatment, we’ll certainly live rich, maybe happy lives… but with a much, much shorter life expectancy.

So, 12 years, everybody. I’m asking you to put the Earth on the top of your values list—if not for the next dozen years, then at least for 1 or 2, because these next couple of years will be the most crucial in changing course. I’m not asking you to leave your family or quit your job. Quite the contrary: we’ll need everyone on board, and it gets easier when you’ve reached out to people around you.

There is a long, long list of things we can do to help; if you’re in, then the first thing you can do is boost this signal, and then keep sharing other people’s research, thoughts, and planet-hacks. Don’t bother reading articles with headlines like, “It’s Worse Than We All Imagined”—you don’t need that psychic poison. But otherwise, research is good, and I’ll keep posting links and facts that will make it easier for us to spread positivity and a call to action.

The second thing you can do is talk to one person every day about climate change. It’s okay if most days it’s the same person, but look for other opportunities when they come up. Here’s a pro tip: Canadians love to talk about the weather. If the cashier at Sobeys gives you an in by saying, “Looks like another cold one, eh?” You can agree, but you can add, “Lately I’ve been thinking more about climate than weather.” They might ask you what’s the difference (Google it, it’s so easy to explain). Or they might agree, opening the door to productive and reassuring conversations.

There’s so much more, but I’ll stop with just one last thing: love yourself. And love your family and friends, and treat yourself and them to good things—beautiful, natural things, not the disposable plastic junk or the crappy farm-factory food that you already know is rotten.

Be good to yourself, because this is going to hurt like hell. But more importantly, be good to yourself because you’re magic; you’re divine; and you deserve to live.

]]>http://mapledanish.com/climate-credo/feed/0Moving Earthwardhttp://mapledanish.com/moving-earthward/
http://mapledanish.com/moving-earthward/#respondWed, 05 Sep 2018 00:49:09 +0000http://mapledanish.com/?p=1133Well, gee. Where does the time go? My last post was one month ago, and the one before that, one month prior again. It’s not as if I haven’t had the time. It’s not as if I haven’t had plenty of big thoughts. But I’ve been trying to adjust my priorities a bit, and blog…

]]>Well, gee. Where does the time go? My last post was one month ago, and the one before that, one month prior again. It’s not as if I haven’t had the time. It’s not as if I haven’t had plenty of big thoughts. But I’ve been trying to adjust my priorities a bit, and blog posting hasn’t won out.

I could blame summer, and nobody would fault me. Summer is an excellent time to take a break from anything strenuous, to settle in and reflect, or else maybe to get out there and soak in experiences. Or both! Whatever the typical rules of engagement are, they get suspended come summertime. That’s a good excuse, right?

In my case, summer has involved a very satisfying second year at the Fortress of Louisbourg. I graduated from musket crews to cannon crews, switched my “Life of a Soldier” presentation from English to French, and even got to bark out orders to the musketeers a few times. It’s good for me out there–I get to be active, outside, and I get to interact with folks from all around the world. It still feels like escapism, but it’s the best possible kind, and not just because I get paid to do it.

The only downside to my soldierly summer has been the heat. Like much of Canada, Cape Breton got hit with record-setting heatwaves in August. The heat at Louisbourg felt especially punishing because of the humidity; you aren’t even halfway into your uniform before the sweat is pouring off you. “Hydration” and “heat stroke” became buzzwords, as soldiers and their supervisors began debating how to sneak water bottles in unseen amongst our historically accurate gear.

Everyone knows the heat is not going away. This summer felt like a sweltering anomaly, but it’s really just the new normal. And most of my colleagues at the park — both the older soldiers from working-class backgrounds, and the young students with their ambitions still stretching out before them — are unafraid to use the words “climate change” in conjunction with this shift. But most of them also say, “What can ya do?” (or, the tautological Caper variation on this thought: “It is what it is.”)

Perhaps last summer, I would have said the same thing. But then I delved into research on climate change in aid of Good Animals, a play that started as a silly distraction from stressful times in France, but morphed into something meaningful. Now, a year later (and five drafts into Good Animals), I am still reading about climate change… and still recoiling vehemently from the notion that “it is what it is.”

As I have said before, the clock is ticking, and every decision made by our current political leaders seems designed to shove us closer and closer to Zero Hour. Even as climate scientists scream about the need for action, the zeitgeist swings between apathy and belligerent denial. You have only to observe the head-in-the-sand response of Alberta’s premier when her precious pipeline project got scotched to conclude that powerful people are willfully, deliberately making it harder and harder to fix the problem. With so much entrenched climate fatalism from on high, where can I find the faith to push for positive change?

It’s not just about my comfort in a wool uniform; the stakes are so, so high. The choices we make and the legislation we enact in the next few years will determine the course of my daughter’s life, along with the lives of 7.6 billion people and counting. Trying to stop the runaway train of fossil fuel consumption won’t guarantee a future free from drought, famine, mass human displacement, or unending war… but inaction at this stage pretty much guarantees we will get all that, and possibly much worse.

I keep reading books by environmentalists and climate scientists who are not afraid of coining terms like “Thermageddon” in order to underline the enormity of the threat. The authors unanimously state that the time for action is NOW. Most of the books were published a decade ago, or more. What does one to do with that kind of information?

Summer is a time for quiet reflection, but the real reason I haven’t posted much lately is this: my words feel tiny and feeble. My actions should somehow reflect my understanding of the challenge, whereas transcribing quotes and statistics about global warming for an audience of maybe a couple of dozen friends feels like kicking the tide. I pine for a time when I had youthful energy and seemingly boundless ingenuity, so I can fearlessly hurl myself into the fray. Instead, I mope and think about volunteering for the local green co-op a few hours every week.

No, no, I’m selling myself short. I have done a few things to further the cause, albeit mostly on a personal level. I arranged for carpool transport to and from Louisbourg throughout the summer. I hung up my laundry on the back deck instead of using the dryer. I planted a tree with my kid. And — probably the biggest of the not-a-big-deal deals — I gave up eating meat. According to a major study on carbon footprint reduction, going vegetarian is the least impactful out of six high-impact life choices one can make to reduce global warming. But it’s a start.

(In case you’re curious: giving up meat has not been a big deal, but that’s maybe in part because I’ve never been much of a foodie to begin with. I should also qualify by saying (a) I still do dairy, like, a lot, and (b) I haven’t been 100% scrupulous about going meat-free either. It’s a work in progress. But my body has adapted without complaint, and I’m saving money and the world. Food for thought!)

Now it’s almost autumn. My plate is full, as always, with jobs (teaching at CBU) and projects (writing and hopefully producing Good Animals, doing Drama with high schoolers, running a storytelling festival, etc.). I desperately want to carve out more time for green activism. I feel like, somewhere inside me, there’s an unstoppable dynamo of world-changing energy that will burst like a dam with the exact right catalyst.

But I also feel like that feeling is just another form of escapism. It’s easy to save the world when it’s all inside your head. And that is, traditionally, where I have done all my best work.

]]>http://mapledanish.com/moving-earthward/feed/0How Queers Can Save the Worldhttp://mapledanish.com/how-queers-can-save-the-world/
http://mapledanish.com/how-queers-can-save-the-world/#respondSun, 05 Aug 2018 01:23:47 +0000http://mapledanish.com/?p=1130It’s Pride Week in Cape Breton. I live in a small city with an aging population and an island mentality which tends to keep residents thinking and behaving like they are about fifteen years in the past. And yet [does some quick math] that puts Cape Breton in 2003, which [does some quick history research]…

]]>It’s Pride Week in Cape Breton. I live in a small city with an aging population and an island mentality which tends to keep residents thinking and behaving like they are about fifteen years in the past. And yet [does some quick math] that puts Cape Breton in 2003, which [does some quick history research] is the year eight out of ten Canadian provinces legalized same-sex marriage. In a roundabout sort of way, then, we’re ahead of our time when it comes to Pride. I feel all warm when I see the rainbow flags flying in front of City Hall, and the rainbow crosswalks at downtown intersections, and the rainbow stickers in shop windows. Plenty o’ rainbows.

I’m straight and cis, but I have long considered myself an ally. The first pro-LGBTQ button I wore said, “Straight but not Narrow.” I remember once bumping into a friend from high school who had since come out of the closet; she read the badge and (I think) misunderstood its implications, because she haughtily replied, “I’m lesbian. And narrow.” (You do you, Sunshine). I went to my first gay party in undergrad. In Montreal, I kissed a boy (and I liked it).

Growing up Unitarian, I was made to understand at a very young age that (a) gay people existed, and (b) this was not a big deal. These two maxims — so simple to accept for some, so alien for others — resurfaced when I chose theatre as my vocation. I remember once around 1995, I was in the long, long lineup to apply for the Edmonton Fringe Festival, and I overheard some dude joking about how “if the world ended and only the people in this lineup survived, we’d never repopulate the species.” It took me forever to figure out the joke. Finally, when it clicked — lots of theatre people are not breeders — it wasn’t really funny. I mean, yeah, maybe the human race would go extinct, but at least we’d see some really spectacular shows before we died.

Lately, I’ve been thinkinga lot about the apocalypse, and I’ve come to the conclusion that queers stand a very good chance of saving humanity — although not through theatre (at least, not exclusively). This is in direct opposition to social conservatives, who are more likely to believe that homosexuality (or the general acceptance thereof) is hastening the collapse of civilization. I don’t happen to think many such people read my blog, so I won’t spend a lot of space addressing them here. But for the sake of completeness, here is a brief apologia for the “traditional values” crowd:

Folks, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Your disapproval of LGBTQ lifestyles might stem from a religious upbringing, or a deep-seated sense of squickiness about butt stuff, or exasperation about the ever-expanding acronym (pro tip: put a “+” at the end if you’re not sure!). I’m not here to judge. But I am here to remind you that we live in a profoundly unstable world, where diminishing oil reserves and increasing climate disruption are going to make the 20th century model of society vanish, and soon. Unless you can find an ironclad scientific theory that connects homosexuality with global warming, you’re better off setting your prejudices aside for now, for the sake of your long-term survival. Maybe, if we can wriggle our way out of this and make it to the 22nd century, then we’ll have the breathing room to address your weird prescriptions about who ought to fall in love with whom. Until then, let’s focus on the big boss battle, okay?

(Unless you also don’t believe in climate change. In which case… is there any way I can convince you to log off the internet and stop voting? It would mean a lot.)

Okay, enough sass and sarcasm. Here’s why I think queers can save the world: they’re everywhere. I don’t mean to suggest that everybody is queer, despite what some of my undergrad professors tried to argue. I simply mean that LGBTQ people exist in every part of the world, and in every culture and subculture. Of course, over the last 50 years (give or take), gay culture has taken on a life of its own — if not, Pride parades would be a pretty dull affair — but every person who identifies as gay/bi/trans/queer/etc. also identifies in other ways, too.

This matters. It matters because in 2018, we are stuck in a rut of in-group identification. Men have always identified as men, and black people have always identified as black people, and Christians have always identified as Christians. But today, it’s getting harder and harder to get people thinking outside their identities. The internet encourages in-group identification across the board: if you are, first and foremost, a World of Warcraft fan, guess what? There are hundreds of thousands of other WoW fans out there who feel the same. They find each other online, and they entrench themselves, raising walls that isolate themselves from all the other in-groups… because who needs ’em? The more time we spend in our in-groups, the less we understand (or care about) the out-groups.

I’m oversimplifying, of course, but I don’t feel it’s an exaggeration to state that our ideological lines have created a social deadlock. If you doubt my hypothesis, spend an hour reading the comments sections of any CNN post. We are paralyzed by a lack of connectivity, and when horrifying, world-shaking events arrive (and they already are), we will desperately need consensus, as well as conviction, and courage.

Enter the queers. I’m serious. There are gay men and gay women; gay blacks and gay whites; gay Christians and gay Muslims. There are even gay Republicans, although the number who’ll admit they voted for Trump may be dwindling. And while queerness does not automatically equal consensus, it does tend to come with a hefty dose of conviction and courage, because let’s face it, being a proud LGBTQ person still takes guts.

The most salient example of what I mean can be found in trans identity. Think about it; before all those other divisions even existed, before we even thought of ourselves as human beings, there were male hominids and female hominids. Sexual dimorphism created the first and most deeply ingrained binary in our conception of ourselves. Ancient ideas about male and female identity remain thoroughly entrenched in our culture (again, Exhibit A: the internet). Progressive movement towards mutual understanding and consensus — and, with that, the capacity to solve world-spanning problems as a species — simply can’t occur without overcoming the most primal of prejudices: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

So thank all the gender-swapping gods for trans people, and two-spirited people, and asexual people. Thank god for human beings who have lived part of their lives as male, and part as female — or who have evolved beyond the whole regressive business of gender, and acknowledge that pigeon-holing people based upon what happens to be between their legs makes about as much sense as segregating people based on eye colour, or Zodiac signs, or whether or not they play World of Warcraft.

I am genuinely grateful, and hopeful, for living in an age when we can finally acknowledge that sex and gender are not the cornerstones of human culture. Those foundations are weak, and they make us weak when we rely too much upon them. Be flexible. If we, as a species, are to survive the coming storms, we need stronger foundations: empathy, understanding. Love. And Pride.

]]>http://mapledanish.com/how-queers-can-save-the-world/feed/0Transfortressing Bordershttp://mapledanish.com/transfortressing-borders/
http://mapledanish.com/transfortressing-borders/#respondSat, 30 Jun 2018 00:18:31 +0000http://mapledanish.com/?p=1127I have been back to work at the Fortress of Louisbourg for three weeks now, but the whirlwind of activity that characterized my first summer has yet to begin. Last year, I started just before Canada Day, when the Parks Canada site rolls out its Peak Season schedule, complete with daily musket drills and cannon…

]]>I have been back to work at the Fortress of Louisbourg for three weeks now, but the whirlwind of activity that characterized my first summer has yet to begin. Last year, I started just before Canada Day, when the Parks Canada site rolls out its Peak Season schedule, complete with daily musket drills and cannon demonstrations. This time around, I started on June 1, with four weeks of Shoulder Season to ease me into the crush.

So gradual has been the rollout that only this week have we soldiers been sent to work at the Dauphin Gate, a post far from the military hubbub of the King’s Bastion. On a busy day in July or August, gate duty is non-stop bonjouring and adieuing, as busloads of tourists spill into, and eventually stumble out of, the fortress. But on a placid day in June, the gate is an oasis of calm, punctuated only infrequently by arrivals or departures. I am free to contemplate the gentle motion of the harbour water as it slides through the sluice gate into the moat. I can watch barn swallows build nests under the eaves of the guardhouse. They dart down to the puddles from last night’s rain, scoop up a mouthful of mud, then flutter back to their half-completed huts to apply the mud-spit glue. It’s serene, watching a bird build its home.

Except for these two assholes.

Bucking the real estate trend, one mated pair of barn swallows has begun building a nest inside the guardhouse. When I first arrived, I found them on one of the rafters, and it took several minutes of slapstick pursuit before I persuaded them to leave. I don’t know how long they’ve been at it, but judging by the shit-stains on the wooden floor, it’s been awhile. After I evict them, I close the door, but anytime visitors express an interest in the guardhouse, I need to re-open it, whereupon they spring out of hiding and glide back in.

Once the visitors leave, I evict them again, and sit on a bench beside the closed red door. The swallows land a few feet away from me, on the top of the musket rack. They gaze down at me with beady eyes. Occasionally they erupt in a refrain of pit-pitpit-pit-pitpits, but mostly they are silent…patient…judgmental. I talk to them in two official languages. I apologize for giving them the boot, but I point out there are plenty of available spots beneath the eaves — or, if they really want an indoor home, the artillery hangar is just up the street, with far less disruptive human traffic. “The guardhouse is about to get really busy,” I tell them, “It’s a bad neighbourhood to raise kids.”

But maybe they’ve already laid eggs. I have no idea how fast barn swallows reproduce. A sick feeling comes over me as my metaphor-mind kicks into overdrive. Am I separating these parents from their children? Have I arbitrarily declared that the interior of the guardhouse is human territory, and am now persecuting the swallows as illegal immigrants?

I shake off the thought. Too much time alone at the gate. Still, the pair continue to watch me, waiting for a change of heart.

The next morning, I bring the swallows up at our morning meeting. The supervisor shrugs it off. “They’re always getting into everything,” he says — and it’s true. In fact, Louisbourg’s proximity to nature is one of the things I love about it. Earlier in June, we were all thrilled to observe a mother fox raise her kit in the ditch surrounding the bastion. She was able to jump out of the man-made ditch, and would hunt for vermin and deliver the treats to her child. We were all sad the day the kit was able to escape the ditch, to join her mother on more protracted hunts. Back at the drawbridge, we humans felt privileged to have had the chance to witness the slice of nature.

Still, I do not feel privileged to have swallows shitting on my tricorne hat. I bring the swallows up again another time, asking other soldiers who’ve had gate duty if they are still a problem.

They say yes. “I think they’ve got eggs in there,” says one.

“If they’ve laid eggs, we can’t interfere,” says another.

Is that true, I wonder? It can’t be an across-the-board Parks Canada policy. Up in the barracks, those mice have almost certainly made baby mice by now — but that doesn’t stop us from setting up mousetraps. Even if there were some particular moral loophole about protecting babies, what happens once the babies grow up? And in the meantime, what about human babies, by which I mean, the young tourists who visit the barracks or the guardhouse, touching everything with their chubby child-fingers? Do we allow them to catch hanta virus or bird flu or whatever? Are the babies of swallows or mice more precious than our own children?

As July creeps ever closer, the crowds pick up. I notice a lot of tourists from the New England states and the Carolinas. Once, up on the barbette overlooking the ridge where, 300 years earlier, the Yankees set up their cannons to pulverize our French defenses, a woman from Virginia tells me that she “never really thought about the fact that there were other cultures here in North America.” She just “always thought we were the same” — that is, American.

I smile very broadly. “You may wish to be careful with that attitude, madam,” I say.

But later I wonder if we’d all be better off naively believing that everyone is us. I’m using the Fortress to hide from the real world, because the real world is a nightmare of fractionalism, with ideological or cultural fences breaking down the so-called global village into a billion booby-trapped yards. If the Virginian woman were telling the truth — if she really, truly believed that everybody is basically the same — it would fill me with hope.

But I’m too cynical to believe that. I fully expect she will head home, read some news articles or tweets about Mexican swallows invading her psychic guardhouse, and click the icon with the frowny-face.

]]>http://mapledanish.com/transfortressing-borders/feed/0Too Little, Too Late: California Editionhttp://mapledanish.com/too-little-too-late-california-edition/
http://mapledanish.com/too-little-too-late-california-edition/#respondFri, 15 Jun 2018 00:49:16 +0000http://mapledanish.com/?p=1124In the latest of modern politics’ endless series of unimaginable happenings, Californians are soon to vote on whether to separate their state into three: North California, California, and South California. It’s safe to say that for most people who don’t live in the state — and probably even most who do — this initiative makes…

]]>In the latest of modern politics’ endless series of unimaginable happenings, Californians are soon to vote on whether to separate their state into three: North California, California, and South California. It’s safe to say that for most people who don’t live in the state — and probably even most who do — this initiative makes no sense. But I read it as the first of many fractures on a map that formed in a time of plenty, but cannot survive in a time of dearth.

California is the most populous state in the Union, and one of the biggest economies in the world. In some respects, it makes a certain amount of sense to break it up, if only to create a more balanced sense of what constitutes a “state.” But critics point out that the split will cause changes to the national electoral college, which might make the entire initiative a grievous case of gerrymandering.

Does it have any chance of happening? If you have not been hiding under a rock since 2016, you’ll know that anything’s possible. Brexit seemed like a ridiculous proposal from the lunatic fringe, but it bloomed into an expensive, divisive reality, thanks in large part to xenophobic Brits who believed that separating from the European Union would separate them from global events. I fear there is a similar mentality at work in California — some sort of internecine conflict between local Democrats and Republicans that blinds locals to the big picture.

Because, from where I’m standing, now is the time to unite. California has suffered more than many other states from the emerging effects of climate change — droughts, mudslides, and wildfires (I Googled the latter, just to see what the most recent major wildfire had been; the first hit was an article titled “California is on Fire Again” from two days ago). It has a huge, lucrative coastline, poised to diminish as ocean levels rise; it has a paucity of fresh water; and it’s on a giant fault line. That last point has nothing to do with climate change, but it’s worth remembering that, even as we struggle to throw our resources towards escalating man-made disasters, there are bona fide natural disasters that could strike at any time, requiring communal action, compassion and ingenuity. An earthquake disaster relief effort would be easier to coordinate under one state government instead of three.

But nobody has much to say about environmental stuff. Even though climate change has been thoroughly and incontrovertably framed as a political issue, it does not seem to factor into policy debates, except as part of an unchanging partisan checklist of ideologies. The lines have been drawn: in 2018, voters are either liberal (Democrat, pro-diversity, anti-abortion, pro-immigration, and oh yeah something about global warming) or conservative (Republican, anti-LGBT, pro-life, anti-immigration, climate change is a hoax designed to scare people into paying more taxes). The idea of voting on environmental action, as an issue, has become alien to us. It’s far more interesting to tear down alliances and then worry later about what we can build in their place.

While the Cal-3 initiative has been under way, President Trump has been launching tariffs at Canada, the U.S.’s largest and most reliable trading partner. He attended, but then seemed to snub, the G7 trade conference. He has long been threatening to dismantle NAFTA and NATO. Basically, Trump’s foreign policy involves the unthinking dismissal of any alliance made by anyone who isn’t Trump. It’s an extraordinarily dangerous game, and it’s catching on.

Where does it come from, this urge to kick the pillars of Western civilization? I think the answer does lie with climate change, the elephant in the room which by now even the most ardent of deniers must surely suspect, subconsciously at least, to be true. It came into focus following an exchange with my old friend R, who happens to live in California (although perhaps not for much longer):

R: What the fuck is even up with all this secession and splitterism, anyway? Whatever happened to unity? It’s just not cool anymore?

S: When resources get thin, in-groups start circling their wagons.

R: Ain’t that the truth. Although statistics show that the poorest Americans went for Clinton. I think it’s not so much how much you’ve got as how worried you are about losing what you’ve got.

There’s your early 21st century zeitgeist, right there. Between overpopulation, and droughts and extreme weather events that threaten to create scarcity, and mass population migrations caused by war (and more scarcity), everybody is getting really scared. In many parts of the world, this is nothing new. But Western civilization, and especially Canada and the U.S., has a lot to lose if these trends continue.

Most of the books I have read about climate change attempt to end their proclamations of doom with some variation of the call to action: if we all act together, with purpose and resolve, right now, then we still have time to turn things around. (Mind you, many of these books were published 10 years ago or more, but I try not to think about that). People in this continent — even plenty of people who believe in climate change — balk at this manifesto, because they know it means making personal sacrifices. Sometimes they pass the buck — “Let the developing nations start, by cutting back on their emissions, to prove they’re serious” — but mostly, they deflect, and double-down on their own perceived right to all the amenities of modern life. As a result, we’re not acting together; we are slowly splitting into smaller and smaller tribes.

My pessimistic take: we’ve passed peak unity. In the same way that we’ve run out of time for humanism to prevail over bigotry, we’ve passed a point where single-purposeness can be achieved. Because R is right, the more worried people get about what they might stand to lose, the more we tighten our grip, cinch in the borders, and bare our teeth.

I felt it myself recently, twice. First was when Alberta and B.C. butted heads over the TransMorgan pipeline (about which more another time, perhaps). Now, I grew up in Alberta during the Progressive Conservative dynasty — a time antithetical to anyone who considers themselves liberal or environmentalist — and yet I still considered myself an Albertan, and saw no real distinction between Albertans and Canadians in general. Yet when I read about the province’s resolve to charge on ahead with their pipeline, regardless of anyone else’s interests or needs, my first reflexive thought was “They don’t have the right.” Not we, but they.

And the second case came out of the G7 conference when I, along with most Canadians it seems, got momentarily patriotic in the face of Trump’s juvenile, ill-formed criticisms of our prime minister. Now the we became Canada again, but only because we had a common enemy in the United States. Expect more of this in the weeks to come, if our trade war continues.

Meanwhile, here on my tiny, broke home island, thousands of Cape Bretoners still feel they’d be better off if they split from Nova Scotia to become their own province. That, at least, is nothing new.

But I wish we’d ask ourselves this question: how many borders is enough? At what point do we stop being a species, and just become different strains of a lethal, global virus? I fear the answer is, centuries ago — but I would dearly love to see some proof to the contrary.

]]>http://mapledanish.com/too-little-too-late-california-edition/feed/0The Good Stuffhttp://mapledanish.com/the-good-stuff/
http://mapledanish.com/the-good-stuff/#respondWed, 06 Jun 2018 22:54:14 +0000http://mapledanish.com/?p=1118My posts are more sporadic than ever, and it seems like when I do post, it’s nearly always Chicken Little stuff. And I do have more climate change polemics coming down the pipe, but before I dump it all over you like so much crude oil, let’s take a little time out to review some…

]]>My posts are more sporadic than ever, and it seems like when I do post, it’s nearly always Chicken Little stuff. And I do have more climate change polemics coming down the pipe, but before I dump it all over you like so much crude oil, let’s take a little time out to review some of the good stuff.

I have an amazing life. At 43, I have a near-perfect balance of varied, stimulating (paid) work and time to develop my passion projects (which also occasionally pay). In fact, thanks to my amazing wife and her unusually stable, well-paying job, I have tremendous flexibility in how I allocate my professional time. When I express interest in teaching new courses at our mutual place of work, she helps to get those courses on the books. And when I lament that my courses are no longer satisfying and maybe I should just quit and do volunteer work, she affirms that yes, volunteerism is very important, and I should follow my heart.

It wasn’t my heart that led us to Cape Breton, but I have found enough here to fill it. I live in a multicultural corner of a multicultural country, where the arts are valued and supported by the public (if not by the municipality). There are opportunities here for me to practice my esoteric art with talented peers. There’s inspiration, in the form of raw, environmental beauty and quirky history. And I have found some humans to love. It’s not a perfect home, but by 2018 global standards it’s pretty terrific.

It’s been more than a year now since we returned from the Great Sabbatical, and the memories have mostly settled into a reassuring arrangement. I haven’t traveled much since then, except for just recently (see below), and it’s been great to feel the roots I started putting down in Cape Breton reattaching themselves to my esrtwhile restless feet. Right now, in middle age, I feel open to all sorts of possibilities: if I get the opportunity to travel again, to live abroad or just to explore new cultures and landscapes, that’s fantastic; but if the Sabbatical was my last great globe-trotting hurrah, well, it was a damn good one — Canada/USA/Japan/UK/France/Belgium/Netherlands/Nepal — and I believe I could be happy if the rest of my life were lived comparatively close to home.

The one big exception involves my friends. Of all the blessings in my life, the most implausible and joy-inducing is my “guys” — the five friends with whom I’ve been close since age 12, or in some cases even younger. Misfits and outcasts, we weathered the tempests of junior high and high school together, umbrellaed by D&D and private jokes and intellectual absurdism and brotherly love. There were falling-outs and prolonged silences and a geographical diaspora that now stretches to parts as remote as Japan, Florida, and California. Even with email and social media, there is no rational way we ought to be as close as we are, even now. But we still log on and play D&D most weekends. And every 2 years, we still fly or drive vast distances to reunite for a few agonizingly short days.

Even with the knowledge that a cross-continental flight may double my carbon footprint for the year, that journey feels worth it.

At the end of May, I flew to Seattle to attend PaizoCon, a role-playing convention organized by the company that occasionally pays me to write role-playing adventures for them (speaking of inconceivable blessings!). I brought my friend L, and I knew I’d be seeing my other friend L, who also writes for Paizo but lives in Edmonton. And I invited my guys, since three of them live on the west coast, but up till the week before the trip, I didn’t know if I’d see any of them there. Schedules were tight, or money was tight, or both. But then the clouds seemed to part and it all came together. Suddenly PaizoCon seemed almost like an intrusion on the precious time I had to spend with T,T, and R.

But it was all good — the convention allowed me to roll some dice and schmooze a bit with my industry idols, and the downtime allowed us to fall into our normal groove, flirting with waitresses and complaining about craft beer and riffing on the strangeness of the world around us. T1 took us to lunch at the Google Compound. R told an interminable story about the best D&D game he’d ever run. T2 said his meds were working better than they’d ever been. The guys even accepted L and L with no qualms. It was all good.

I can’t say it was just like it used to be, though. I was keenly aware of our advancing age, and not just in our inability to stay up till 6am talking about girls, the way we used to. We’re all looking and feeling our age, and I worry about how the back-half of an 80-year lifespan is going to treat a bunch of out-of-shape screen monkeys. Plus I worry about how the world’s steep decline might make it harder for us to keep up the pace of our reunions. There are already plenty of complications (J and J couldn’t make Seattle due to family and work commitments). If jobs disappear, if meds become scarce, will it still feel worthwhile to cross the globe just to bask in nostalgia?

The last day of the convention, while I was swimming in the hotel pool, I made a strange, silent resolution to myself: I can’t guarantee that I’ll be there for each one of them, at the end of their lives. But I want to outlive them. I don’t want any of them to hear about my departure, and feel the pain of having missed it.

So, in a weird, roundabout way, that’s my commitment to keep on living, even if the world goes to hell. So far, there are many signs of faraway storms — but here, on my doorstep, it is still calm.